5 posts from August 2011

Aug 21, 2011

What is engagement? Starting with an easy one :). It is when students crave learning, when they runto school, and dread leaving.

What is teaching? I see it as an unwrapping and a wrapping. The unwrapping is the job of the teacher, enabled by the student, and the wrapping is the job of the student, enabled by the teacher.

Unwrapping, according to sculptor Fredrik K.B.: “There is life inside the stone. Just as with people, you have to lure it out with love. To force upon it a form you self [sic] have made up is to me the worst form of violence.”

Except for some indigenous societies, this concept is anathema to most Western parents and school systems. Our “evolved” goal: “an effective education leads to gainful employment and economic independence.”

To create employees, education identified common denominator skills across “all” jobs and requires all students to learn them in the same way. To be common, these skills (fractions, algebra, grammar, essay-writing, etc.) are abstracted, and thus difficult to connect to any “real” job, and for most students, impossible to visualize as something fun or interesting or even employment-like.

Skipping the unwrapping process altogether, our system aims to shellack every child with a veneer of “common” skills so that they are generically palatable to the greatest number of employers. In doing this, we admit that education’s “customer” is the employer, not the child; and that success is not fulfilling the child’s destiny, but rather creating faceless drones.

...Truly honorable work.

Ironically, employers are not looking for automatons, they are looking for inquisitive, motivated, creative, team-oriented, and energetic people who are compelled to achieve greatness.

Maybe a bit of a disconnect here...

What is technology? In this context, technology is any “tool” that comes into the classroom and disrupts the status quo. Much of the education community perceives it as a threat because it disrupts “control and order.”

I wrote about the 21st century imperative in 2008, talking about how technology has enhanced communication, and bypassed the teacher as a bottleneck to information; you will also see some awesome quotes on how the establishment decries these intruders in their midst.

But I missed something in my post - technology can be more than this. It, with the help of a teacher, can be the path to engagement, and through that, the unwrapping and wrapping of a student.

“Why?” is probably the most frequently-spoken word by young people everywhere. Instead of dismissing this “insolence,” why(!) not have the child figure out the answer themselves? Most children in the West already have the second most powerful research tool ever (the first being the brain) in their smartphone, let them use it!

Teachers will tell you that a smartphone is a distraction, with Facebook and YouTube and games, they need to ban it so that kids can focus on “learning.”

I don’t agree. If you are given a thing and not shown how “best” to use it, you will use it “randomly.” To compel a student, you must take what interests them already (be it baking or playing music or humor or how-things-work or fashion), and help them “get good at it.” Teachers can help them use the tools at hand to observe, reflect, document, and exhibit what compels them. This is learning!

Michelangelo said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.” This is true of cooking, DJing, being funny, building a car, or creating amazing clothes. In fact, there is hard work and mathematics, grammar, communications, science, and much more in every one of these endeavors.

Education is not wrong to define subjects like mathematics, language arts, and science as “core” to almost everything that follows. Its failure is in being “well-intentioned, wise, experienced, and successful” adults who have forgotten the moments in their lives oh so long ago when they swore they’d never be the unfeeling jerks their parents were.

Education has the opportunity to help students use the tools they have and like in ways that lead to learning. It can help them unwrap the perfect statue(s) that exists within every child, and through that, make each one a unique and valued and shape changing contributor to our ever-stodgy adult world.

Aug 16, 2011

Nope - it’s not a typo - a prat is an incompetent fool; and looking at the Party of Donkeys, I see a whole lot of those in their midst.

The DemoPrats have accomplished little to nothing since 2006, during which they’ve had control of the House (‘06-10), Senate (‘08-) and White House (‘08-); their leadership is inept and toothless, and they lack the ability to lead.

The Republicans are dogmatic bullies under the dual (and bizarre) thumbs of the Tea Party and Grover Norquist. But they are masterful at focusing their message in a way that is instantly resonant. Their platform in my words:

Taxes are evil - We must curb government excess and put Americans to work.

Life is sacrosanct - We must protect innocent unborn children from those who would kill them.

Peace through might - We must ensure America’s freedom and safety with a powerful military and border security that deters all our enemies.

To any Democrats that might read this post - can you in as succinct a way articulate your Party’s position?

...

Yeah - it’s a problem isn’t it? In the absence of a compelling message, you allow the Rs to define you as Anti-Jobs, Anti-Life, and Anti-Freedom.

...DemoPrats

From the President down to the petulant Reid/Pelosi dullards, no-one has been able to effectively challenge the Republicans. This is after all the party favored by most of the media, almost all of Hollywood, and some of the brightest minds in the country, and yet, they are bumfuzzled.

Taxes create jobs. Capitalism is greed - if your net revenue/employee is positive, you will hire more people because you will make more money. If your taxes go up, you’re still greedy and you’ll hire even more people to make back the tax money - remember employees are a tax deduction. There’s a ton of data to back this up.

Life doesn’t end at birth. Every life must be protected; a healthy birth is the beginning - we must ensure a healthy life for every child - that includes an excellent education and guaranteed healthcare. Healthy, well-educated children are net contributors to our economy - they do honest work, and pay their taxes. In fact, they give back more than we spend on them. The Bible says we must protect life, and we couldn’t agree more - the healthier our nation, the wealthier we are, the more jobs we create, and the less debt we incur.

America first. We have a lot of problems to fix here at home, and a lot of enemies wishing to attack us in our own backyard. Let us bring our troops back from abroad, and defend our own cities and towns. We don't need to be the world's cop anymore.

This is just an off-the-cuff (one hour of thinking) response written by an immigrant marketing guy.

The Dems could easily de-Prat themselves if they were to utilize the full capacity of the talent on their side; they just need to focus on connecting to their audience, and not on trying to be smart, something in which all DemoPrats revel.

Effective communication is not when the speaker does a good job, but when the audience hears what they need, in the way they need it.

To be clear, this is only a way to engage the voters politically, and win an election. It does not change the DemoPrats' ineptitude in government.

I think there is a possible fix. President Obama needs to replace Vice President Biden with someone who will run the entire Domestic portfolio. He must be able to wrangle Congress, and know how to streamline our government and catalyze job creation. He must be confrontational, decisive and impolite, but most of all, he needs to totally resonate with "regular people."

Aug 14, 2011

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

Ford's planned auto-innovations will enable cars to run apps, read your Twitter feed to you, let you update your Facebook status, and surf the web, all while driving! Ford executive Sue Cischke: “Telling younger people not to use a cellphone is almost like saying, ‘Don’t breathe.’”

We know that texting while driving is more dangerous than being drunk or stoned, and yet Ford, in their quest to be "with it" have chosen to pander to kitsch ["Cischke" <--> "kitsch"?] and actually enable distracted driving to win younger buyers - now there's a strategy - let’s proactively help young drivers "stop breathing...” - not sure this is the path to repeat business.

In talking to high-tech C-level executives, I know they are desperate for strategies to help "connect with the consumer." This despite the fact that most of their revenue comes from corporate clients, whose values and priorities are decidedly not-consumer. Corporations (and older people) are interested in function, economic value, predictability and vendor stability; young consumers are interested in form, social value, creativity, and “new.”

So why are large corporations like Ford and others desperate to be hip when their real (paying) customers value the opposite?

In the old days, for costly items like trucks or computers, it was easier to get corporations to buy - they had more money to spend, there were fewer of them (easier to sell/market to a smaller segment), and they could write off the costs of these purchases, making them even cheaper. Whereas the consumer had less money, was much harder to reach, and didn't have the tax advantage. The barriers to entry were lower at the office.

Today corporate customers are extending the lifecycle of hard goods like cars and PCs; they’re reluctant to deplete their cash reserves; and they’re negotiating when they do buy. None of these problems exist in the home, and more specifically, in the minds of new buyers. The barriers to entry are now lower at home and with younger people.

Their example is Apple, who has seen non-corporate, young-consumer sales also drive adult and business purchase behavior. But their “cool” comes from an uncompromising commitment to the product and its design. This priority is why people buy, and why they can command a premium price in tough times. It is also what justifies the "adult" decision.

Executives at Ford (and many high tech companies) are glomming onto social media in the belief that being Twitter/Facebook-enabled associates them with youth and “cool,” and winningyoung and hip customers, leads to “adult” sales as well. This is just badly-executed imitation.

It feels like Ford (and other) executives no longer believe they can “do a thing,” and desperate to remain relevant, are vainly grasping at social networking straws in the hopes that that becomes their new killer feature.

They should know better. Marketing and random features don't compensate for bad decisions and weak products.

The first step is simple - be clear about your “why” - once you know why you exist - what your fundamental purpose is, then the what and the how become much clearer. There is no doubt about Apple's "why." I fear that companies like Ford have gotten so pendulous that their “why” is lost somewhere in the folds of their quadruple chin.

Instead of enabling distracted driving, get on a treadmill, and work off the fat (high priced consultants, MBAs, etc.) that has caused you to misplace who you really are.

Aug 10, 2011

Each riot was sparked by an event - the Canucks losing the Stanley Cup, and a black man killed by the police in a way that raised the community's suspicions. The rioters in both cases are young (teens and early 20s) people. The police are not designed for, and ill-equipped to quell riots and prevent innocent people and local buildings/stores from being harmed.

[ASIDE: Domestic police forces ought not be militias, armed to the teeth, and bent on suppressing the citizenry; this assume-the-worst-of-our-people attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy.]

There's one other thing the countries have in common: while both invest heavily in, and are reputed to have excellent public education systems, their schools are becoming increasingly mechanistic and factory-like. Success is measured by test scores; effectiveness is based on numeric data; and students are viewed as numbers (vs. humans), and assumed to be cheaters and prone to bad behavior, read: mistrusted.

In good times, economic success can overcome these failings, but with increased unemployment and more people falling below the poverty line, no-one is present to model a "peaceful national character and an accepted moral outlook" or the idea of civility for young people. Parents are too busy making ends meet, and there are few "good" influences in the media, or in our increasingly aloof neighborhoods.

Their most formative experiences happen whilst in school, and if the "texture" of that experience is "you'll be held back if you don't do well on the tests"; "we know you're a truant or are cheating and we will catch you"; and being treated as a data point and not a person, how do we expect them to grow into anything but disenfranchised young adults, who when presented with an opportunity to rebel against "the man" will gleefully take it?? This BBC interview of two young British rioters is a classic example of the result.

Why doesn't this happen as much in America (which has an even more mistrustful public education system)? I think it's because the local police forces are more violent and better armed.

[ASIDE: Domestic militia can discourage violence, but at what cost? Prime Minister Cameron just said, "There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick...It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel that the world owes them something." His remarks are political peacocking, and by weaponizing his police forces, he creates an even greater rift with the citizenry. Being 'tough on crime' is a failed strategy, as evidenced in America, which boasts the highest percentage of incarcerations on the planet, but no corresponding reduction in crime.]

It is regrettable that politicians can't focus on root causes. In all three (and many other) countries, our children are victims of an increasingly dehumanized education system. The powers that manage (districts, departments/ministries of education, etc.) and influence (Gates, etc. Foundations) public schools are filled with too few real educators, and too many MBAs, whose training in micro-thinking leads to disastrous macro-outcomes.

"Take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves" is a practice in most MBA programs (in their parlance: what gets measured gets done, just focus on optimizing your piece of the business), and is one of the worst things to happen to schools (and corporations) over the last generation. "Penny-wise and pound-foolish," or "missing the forest for the trees" are much more apt, but frequently ignored.

When you manage teachers based on their students' test scores, you demand that the teacher ignore the person in front of them, and focus ONLY on their preparation to answer a set of questions on a piece of paper. Learning is not a requirement; correct responses are.

More and more parents choose a school for their children based on test scores, in the mistaken belief that that's a "good education."

Is it at all surprising that young adults aggressively rebel when given the opportunity? Is it at all surprising that they have a diminished sense of civility and respect? Which adults treated them with civility and respect? What behaviors did their "models" exhibit towards them when they were most impressionable?

Learning is an inherently human act - the more you separate the person from their education, the less educated and "human" our younger generations will be.

The people to blame for the riots in Vancouver and London are not the kids (they are merely accountable), but rather the adults (parents and educators and policy makers) who created the education system in which they were dehumanized.

Aug 07, 2011

Sound familiar? It will if you've seen The Shawshank Redemption, and recall when Andy Dufresne (protagonist) finds proof of his innocence, but Warden Norton (antagonist/scumbag) dismisses it. Andy "knows" he is innocent; the warden "knows" that all criminals are guilty. We are on Andy's side, and appalled that the warden doesn't even consider the possibility of innocence. In the end, the warden is vanquished and Dufresne is free, but both remain obstinately true to their beliefs.

I was reminded of this when reading The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - a brilliant analysis on the strength of our belief systems, and why persuasion is so difficult. Psychologists use the term cognitive dissonance to explain it - when we are faced with conflicting ideas, we "reposition" things to reduce the discomfort. Like when justifying an expensive purchase - "Sure this is an expensive car, but that's because it's well-engineered, safer, and will last so much longer than that cheap clunker you just bought - you get what you pay for."

Unprovoked, most of us are somewhat open-minded, but when pushed, we forsake reasonable for defensive and obstinate, and that leads to bad decision-making.

As American politics kicks into gear for the 2012 elections, apparently *every* politician feels pushed and under siege, and none are capable of making good decisions. The abject disinterest in governing has never been more present than during the recent debt ceiling and FAA debacles. The good of the nation is/was forsaken for the good of the Party or the individual politician.

Why? Because politics is a zero-sum game - there is only one winner. It used to be that candidates would campaign on the merits of their vision, their ideas, talk about who they were as a person, and "may the best (wo)man win." But as politics has "evolved," they've discovered that it is much easier to make your opponent(s) lose than it is to show why you should win. Rather than being the best candidate, it's about being the one with the best opposition research and counter-marketing.

Bizarrely, this new breed of politician's cognitive dissonance causes them to actually believethat integrity and good is about partisan one-upmanship and not about service and governing.

Is this a reasonable basis for judging credit-worthiness? Will a loan officer at a bank decide to lend money to a couple based on the numbers, or on whether they keep bickering all the time? I'm sure the bickering should be a factor, but am not convinced it is the ONLY factor.

How can they be so obtuse?

Having said this, the reaction so far from both the White House and Congress is partisan drivel. The ONLY thing politicians are capable of is showing how the other side is to blame for everything that's bad, and how they are righteous and good (there is no pressure to talk about compromise, leadership or governing). If immaturity and petulance were the only factors, America should receive a rating below that of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain - maybe closer to that of Syria or North Korea.

A strength of democracy is that the fringes are attenuated by the center; and that effective partisanship impedes government overreach. A weakness of democracy is that it is possible for enough of the electorate to be swayed in the moment, that the most fringe voices are rewarded, and the more honorable and insightful are ignored.

Today the American public is as polarized as her politicians, no-one is considering the ramifications of the downgrade or our economic state, instead we are each bent on making sure everyone knows how screwed up the other side is, and how we'd be better off if they didn't exist. This is our cognitive dissonance, founded on our deepened commitment to the votes we've cast.

How can we be so obtuse?

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things; and no good thing ever dies." These are the last words spoken by Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

Does good come out of bad? I hope so. Has American been harmed enough by our politicians' failings to demand and expect more from ourselves than angry sound bytes? Not yet, but perhaps soon.

I was listening to a show on NPR asking, "What is life?" I agreed with the NASA definition - life exists when there is procreation and evolution. I was talking to a friend later about the unasked question, "What is humanity?" I think humanity exists when there is empathy and aspiration.

Survival requires community - we must have more empathy for our brothers and sisters, because the community prevails when the least among us survives and thrives. Success requires ability and desire - we must make our children more capable than we are, and we must imbue in them a desire and urgency to be greater than their parents.

Out of all that has happened recently, my hope is that we overcome our cognitive dissonance, and resurrect our humanity.